Patriotic covers were a popular form of visual propaganda and became a collector’s item during the Civil War. Produced both in the North and South, these envelopes featured patriotic imagery and slogans, although some—primarily printed in the North—employed stereotypical and exaggerated images of the speech, dress, and physical characteristics of African Americans.

This cover depicts an enslaved man, about to be whipped by a white enslaver, begging for help from "John Bull," the personification of the country of England. John Bull sits comfortably on a bale of Confederate cotton.